Ok, kids. I've been chipping away at the 30 teams post for our beloved flightless birds, but I also want your input. I'll post a series of threads about specific sections of the overall write-up so we can hash out details and make sure that we've assembled the best possible representation of the team as well as the subreddit. This thread will be for the top 5 most notable players in Penguins history (that are either retired, inactive, or no longer with the team). To avoid any possible pretense of karma-whoring or the like, this is a self post and I won't post individual comments for each player to be upvoted/downvoted. Obviously, the top two players are Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. I would also submit that a case could be made for anyone on this list:

I vote to claim #10 since he won two cups and played several seasons after being traded to Pittsburgh. He also won a Lady Byng, Selke, and +/- award with the Penguins. He did not win any cups with any other teams.

Larry Murphy won four cups in an 8-year span (PIT 91-92, DET 97-98). Also, the puck-clearing method bearing his namesake, the Murphy dump, is still known as such today. Since he played for 20+ years and for several teams, I think winning two cups here first puts up at the top of his claiming rights list.

Just playing devils advocate here... I'm going to say to take Barrasso off the list. Sure- he was probably the best goaltender to play for us, but he wasn't exceptional by any means. I'd attribute his success to what people call "Chris Osgood Syndrome"- meaning Barrasso was nothing more than an average goaltender on an above average team.

Still, everyone else who did the 30/30 threads seemed to try to get a mix of different positions. We're the Penguins, we could easily put 5 forwards in our most notable players but there should be some diversity.

I definitely see your point but I still feel that we shouldn't just throw someone in just for the sake of compliance. This isn't an "allstar 1st line", its a "top five players".

To stem to a probably politically incorrect analogy... Say you have 3 job openings. To fill the positions, should you hire one person of [Race A], one person of [Race B], and one person of [Race C], even though the top 3 people for the job all happen to be of [Race B]?

I was waffling on Francis. I know the team has honored him as a member of their "All-Time Team", and he did wear the C, if only for a short time. But at the same time, when you say Ron Francis, people think Whalers/Canes, even though he played 7+ seasons in Pittsburgh.

I can definitely see that, and it would be good to at least have one defenseman and one goalie in the mix. What about Pronovost over Stevens? My thinking is that until Crosby surpassed him this season he was in the top-five all time scoring list for the team, and he would be the only player from their pre-cup days to make the cut. It would be nice to have a little bit more of a nod to the team's full history rather than just the last 20ish years.

For the record, when Puck Daddy did their Mt. Rushmore posts for each team, Seth Rohrabaugh (Empty Netters) chose Lemieux and Jagr obviously, Crosby (not eligible for this discussion apparently but already arguably the most important player in franchise history other than Lemieux, who Seth notes probably means more to the Pens than any other single person does to a single franchise in all of sports) and Barrasso. He chose Barrasso on the idea that he was instrumental to the Cup wins and solidified a position that had never been good for the Pens. I happen to agree with the logic. I also think that Ron Francis deserves to be on here, unless there's a rule saying any one person can only be on one team. Francis is one of the greatest players to ever lace up skates and he played a significant portion of his career here.

Crosby will be included in the "Current Notable Players" section of the write-up, so he will definitely be given his due (his presence on the Pens correlated with a 4000 ticket per game sales increase at Mellon Arena in his rookie season).

That's a great argument for Barrasso, and I definitely like Francis for a spot. It's tough though, we've got Paul Coffey who should absolutely be there, as well as Jean Pronovost being arguably the Pens' best player in the pre-Lemieux era.

My only argument against Pronovost is that the Pens were a fairly marginal franchise before Lemieux. I thought about Coffey, but went with Francis just because Francis played parts of 8 seasons here compared to parts of 5 for Coffey. I can totally support Coffey over Francis if we'd like to have a defenseman represented.

I'd definitely like to put a defenseman in the lineup, but I'd rather base it on the popular opinion of the subreddit (or at least those who take a few minutes to respond) than enforce my own view.

I know the franchise was marginal prior to Lemieux, I just felt like it would be ignoring nearly half of the franchise's history to exclude the team's first legitimate star player. BUT, that's only my opinion and it's no better than anyone else's opinion.

Yeah. I think the more recent expansion franchises definitely have a tougher road to hoe. Any of the 60's expansion teams have had at least a handful of top-tier players and noteworthy seasons, even if a couple of them haven't hoisted Lord Stanley's chalice.

Ugh. I have read that story probably 3-4 times in the past two weeks in gathering information for this piece. I wasn't a fan during his time, but I've always had that same sort of nostalgia about him as long as I've been a fan of the team.

I was born in 83 in Ottawa, they didn't have a team yet and my family was trying to brainwash me with Canadiens propaganda. I was 6 and saw Mario just flying around the ice.....the penguin on the jersey probably helped. Eventually they gave in and started buying me Penguins pajamas and other memorabilia.

In April 09 I drove to Pitt to catch a game, met Sid, Flower and a newbie Letang.

Aaaaaaaaaand I'm jealous. I was born and raised in Alaska, and the furthest east I've been is Council Bluffs, Iowa. I plan on making a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh at some point, but that's a long road to travel.

It took me ~20 hours to get to Iowa, so I think It would be roughly another 12 hours. That's a tough trip to consider with a 2-year-old in tow just to go see some hockey. Right now, I'm looking at driving to San Jose for a game, that's only ~7 hours, which isn't too bad.